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Abstract
This paper outlines continuity and change in official spatial practices in Colombo, Sri Lanka, by weaving together two narratives. The first is the story of the transformation of Sri Lanka’s first textile mill, also a crucible of working-class struggles and the Left movement, into the country’s largest luxury residential and commercial enclave. The second is an account of the struggle for housing and land rights of a community of former mill workers and their descendants. The paper highlights the importance of histories of particular places and communities in illuminating processes and politics of planned urban transformation. It underlines the importance of grasping the dynamics of official spatial practices through the lived experiences of those most exposed to these practices as opposed to understanding them through mainframes such as planning or aggregated citywide impacts. The paper concludes by critically positioning the current spatial practices of the Urban Development Authority in a post-war context and considering their political implications and the possibilities of framing resistance and alternatives.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and to Dr Kanchana Ruwanpura for the provocation to write and her subsequent support.
Notes
1 The strike was precipitated by a combination of reasons including measures, such as outlawing strikes in so-called ‘essential services’ and in the government sector, an anti-worker Employment Relations Bill, and soaring inflation, food and energy prices (Rasseedin Citation2011).
2 The Bank citing ‘best practices’ elsewhere had in the mid-1990s began advocating relocating communities from ‘environmentally sensitive zones’ into high-rise apartments and even sent Sri Lankan officials to Hong Kong and Singapore to study low-cost apartments (Wickrema Citation2005).
3 The Mahinda Chintana (literally thoughts or vision in Sinhala) was the official development policy framework of the government led by President Mahinda Rajapakse.
4 The privileging of forms of immaterial labour in the information technology and the knowledge services industry (Sanyal and Bhattacharya Citation2011).
5 In early May 2010, Mews Street in Kompaniveediya (Slave Island) witnessed the first of the military-led demolitions by the militarised UDA (CPA Citation2014).
6 Prospects of relocating underserved settlements in Colombo suburbs, Ministry of Defence, available at http://www.defence.lk/new.asp?fname=Prospects_of_relocating_underserved_settlements_in_Colombo_suburbs_20130205_01.
7 Supra note.
8 Often men came alone, at least initially, so common was this that in 1921, 61 per cent of Colombo's population were men (Perera Citation1999).
9 This seems to be the date most commonly accepted within the community and was given by many elderly former mill workers.
10 From old photographs and descriptions rendered by community members.
11 From interviews with former mill workers.
12 Also closely associated were N.M. Perera, Colvin R. de Silva, Leslie Goonewardene, Philip Gunawardena, Robert Gunawardena, and H.C. Nissanka.
13 Based on an interview with Neervai Ponnian, a Tamil writer who covered the Ceylon Trade Union Federation for the Communist Party's Tamil magazine.
14 Based on interviews with Neervai Ponnian (supra note); a former millworker, also an active member of the union, and his wife. They both remember the strike as it began, they said, just a few days after their wedding. Pararajasingham (Citation2006) also refers to this strike.
15 From Wikileaks, 1976 COLOMB0 0905_b regarding the nationalisation of the Wellawatte Mills available at https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1976COLOMB00905_b.html, accessed 28 April 2015.
16 Some millworkers reported that while other communities of workers living in individual homes built on mill-owned land nearby were given titles to their lands, the Mayura Place community was denied titles because they lived in line-rooms. I have not been able to verify this.
17 Some claimed that it was active since 1989.
18 Personal communication from community members.
19 Tao had sold the Corporation its first ship in exchange for a 20% share in the Colombo Dockyard (The Sunday Island Citation2012)
20 See http://www.havelockcity.lk/faqs/faqs1.php, accessed 13 August 2015.
21 Copies of official correspondence in this regard available on file with the author; the money itself appears to have been paid only in 2007.
22 Two initial tranches of Rs. 50,000 each and the rest in equated monthly instalments over 20 or 30 years (the standard package for all relocated families).
23 This appears to have been prompted by recordings of the Mews Street evictions that were widely circulated resulted in some public criticism.
24 ‘President opens S.P. Tao-funded Sama Vihara in Havelock Town,’ http://samavihara.org/en/news/6-lorem-ipsum-dolor-sit-amet-consectetur-adipiscing-elit, accessed 14 October 2015.
25 Testimonial by Ven. Atapattukande Ananda Thero http://samavihara.org/nl/testimonials, accessed 14 October 2015.
26 Not long after the UDA's take over by the military, the World Bank stepped in to support it with a 230 million USD project; other projects have since followed.
27 The use of fascist is prompted both by the inadequacy or inaccurateness of other labels and by the nature of the Sena itself. While ‘Hindu nationalist’ is a common description, not all Hindu nationalists espouse everything the Sena stands for or endorse its methods and nationalism itself is only one part of the Sena's credo. 'Militant' and 'extremist' lack any serious political connotation. The Sena's credo combines the deployment of ideas of superiority based on race and religious identity, nationalism, and paternalism and patriarchy. These are frequently enforced through a rigorous intolerance of dissent and free expression, resort to or threat of violence, especially against minorities, as well as capture and control of state and civil society spaces. In other words, the Sena reflects a totalitarian ethos that has strong echoes of fascism.